I’m headed to Salt Lake City this evening to attend the semi-annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In the world of Mormonism, Conference is a big deal: a chance to see and hear words of counsel directly from the General Authorities, including Church president Thomas Monson, and women Church leaders as well. The messages are usually familiar, centering around devotion to God, family, and gospel, but they can also touch on timely topics such as the importance of civility in public life or financial preparedness, and when they do, Mormons sit up and take notice.
Even more important, perhaps, than what is said is how it feels to be at the convergence of so many Mormons both in real time and electronically. Salt Lake City will receive hundreds of thousands of visitors this weekend. The new Conference Center, just north of historic Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake, will seat 22,000 conference goers for each of five Conference sessions. And around the world, millions of Mormons will have church on television or internet—watching or listening to the satellite and cable-transmitted voices of Church leaders.
During Conference, my thoughts inevitably wander to the translators sitting in the Conference Center in Salt Lake, relaying the words real-time in Apache, Arabic, ASL, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cambodian, Cantonese, Chuukese, Croatian, Farsi (Persian), Fijian, Haitian, Hiligaynon, Hindi (Fiji), Hindi (India), Hmong, Ilokano, Indonesian, Kosraean, Laotian, Malagasy, Malay, Marshallese, Mongolian, Navajo, Palauan, Papiamento, Pohnpeian, Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Tahitian, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Yapese
I’ll also be thinking about local translators sitting in their home countries, relaying translations back to the Conference Center to be combined with video for almost simultaneous rebroadcast in Aymara, Armenian, Cebuano, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Guarani, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kekchi, Korean, Kuna, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Quechua (Peru), Quiche, Quichua (Ecuador), Russian, Samoan, Swedish, Tagalog, Tongan, and Ukrainian.
Translators will also do their work in real time for local congregations in Albanian, Bislama, Cakchiquel, Estonian, Icelandic, Kiribati, Latvian, Lithuanian, Mam, Nivacle (Chulupi), and Tzutujil.
And translators working in Amharic, Efik, Fante, Igbo, Lingala, Twi, and Yoruba will record DVDs for distribution. When I was young, Conference was translated into a handful of European languages and Tongan. A few years ago, I spent a whole morning tuning into the various real-time translation streams on-line. As someone who has spent some time in the Navajo Southwest, I listened longest to Conference in the beautiful Dine Bizaad—Navajo language.
Ya’a’teeh, brothers and sisters.
Happy conference weekend.
And welcome to 21st century Mormonism.
